I found these magnolia blossoms close enough to the ground for close-up photographs. I was reminded of something I read a couple of days ago. Have you ever heard of “the magnolia myth”? The myth is based on an outrageous idea that slaves were happy, well-fed, and better off than their descendants are in twenty-first century America. Most of us southerners know better.

These beautiful flowers deserve better than to be the symbols of a great lie that the South before the Civil War was a place mainly of columned plantation houses with white women happily perched on pedestals being served gladly by carefree field hands and devoted house slaves.